Jedidiah Pickart

Jedidiah Pickart (14 July 1840-16 August 1895) was an Imperial Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee during Reconstruction.

Biography
Jedidiah Pickart was born in Franklin, Tennessee on 14 July 1840, and he had no education. Pickart worked as a painter before the American Civil War, and he volunteered in the Confederate States Army during the conflict. Pickart was wounded during the Battle of Nashville in 1865, and he decided to join fellow Tennessee war veterans in forming the Ku Klux Klan after the war's end. Pickart took part in the influencing of state politics, backing Nehemiah S. Steel's campaigns for the US House of Representatives during the early 1870s. Pickart was forced to go underground after Ulysses S. Grant ordered the suppression of the KKK, and he died in a work-related accident in 1895.